Mortal Fear

“Edward?” Drewe says again, her voice plaintive.

Still nothing.

The smell of gasoline is strong by the wall, but Berkmann hasn’t lighted it yet. My first instinct is to move to the other window, ten feet down the wall from where Drewe stands. That would give me the best field of fire. But if Berkmann is out front, he knows that too.

“Where is Harper?” he asks suddenly.

I whirl toward the EROS computer, my finger on the trigger. I’d forgotten that the only way I’ll hear his voice now is through the answering machine across the room.

Drewe has put a hand on the window frame to steady herself. She’s been acting with so much assurance that I assumed she was as confident as she looked. But she’s far from it. In fact, now that Berkmann has answered, she seems too flustered to respond.

As I watch her floundering, the scenario she sketched out comes back to me. Pressing my chest flat against the wall between the windows, I extend my right arm, edge along the wall, and press the barrel of my.38 against her left temple.

“You see him now?” she asks, her voice full of genuine shock.

“You’re going to die for that, Harper.”

Berkmann is definitely in front of the house.

“That’s not a good way to start this negotiation, Edward,” Drewe says.

“I’m not negotiating.”

“This talk, then. That synthesized voice was so sterile. Not like this. Your real voice is much more intriguing.”

“Shut up, damn you!” I yell, supplying what seems like my appropriate line.

“I’m going to burn you alive,” Berkmann says coldly.

“FUCK YOU!” I close my eyes and try to picture the scene outside. Drewe’s Acura is parked broadside to the house, about twenty yards from the window. The Explorer is ten yards closer to the house, but farther to the left than the Acura.

“Harper won’t hurt me, Edward,” Drewe says. “He doesn’t have the guts. Just like he didn’t have the guts to tell me about Erin.”

“Why don’t you try walking out then!” I scream.

“I don’t have to,” she says in a strange voice. “Edward’s going to get me out.” She turns into the barrel of the.38 and gives me a look that could freeze mercury. “Would you really shoot me, Harper? Let’s see if you will.”

She looks back into the darkening yard and says, “You know what would kill him, Edward?”

“What?”

“If I told him the truth about sex with him.”

“Tell him.”

“Shut up, goddamn it!”

“I’ve never had an orgasm with Harper inside me. Not in three years of marriage and a year of sex before that. Of course hethinks I have. Sad, isn’t it?”

“That will soon change.”

Berkmann’s voice sounds different somehow. More strained.

“I honestly can’t believe Erin enjoyed sex with him,” Drewe goes on. “Because she knew about sex, I can tell you. You wouldn’t believe some things she did.”

Berkmann says nothing.

My gun arm is tingling the way it did twenty years ago, when I reached into the fort to pull Miles out. I sense Berkmann aiming at my hand the way I sensed that rattlesnake. It would be a risky shot for him, firing through glass so near to Drewe’s head. But he might try it with a tranquilizer dart. I take a quick step backward, pulling the.38 behind the frame of the window.

“What kinds of things?” Berkmann asks suddenly.

Drewe glances at me. “I saw her get out of a DUI ticket by making a highway patrolman… you know, in his pants. I mean it. She didn’t even take off her clothes. His either. It was sort of like a slow dance on the side of the road. Erin didn’t care. To her sex was like breathing.”

“And to you?”

“I know how I want it to be. I want it to be… transcendent. Am I wrong to want that?”

“No.”

“The few times I’ve ever managed to get… aroused enough, Harper’s already finished. Do you know how to touch, Edward? Where to touch?”

“I know places you don’t know you have.”

“You slut!” I scream. “Hang up!”

“Tell him what you’ll do if I hang up, Edward.”

“I’ll light that gasoline, Harper. And when you come running out, I’ll shoot you in the pelvis. I have the deputy’s gun, and I’m an excellent shot. I have Officer Mayeux’s gun too, in case you’re wondering.”

I grit my teeth and close my eyes. I can’t see Mayeux giving up his gun while alive. This isn’t working. Drewe thinks she’s stalling, but Berkmann isn’t sitting still. Darting to my desk, I scrawl a message on a legal pad with black magic marker. Then I return to the wall and hold it up where Drewe can see it by looking slightly to the left.

HE’S PLAYING YOU! TRICKING US!

YOU’VE GOT TO TURN IT AROUND!

GET ME A SHOT!

In the crackling silence, Drewe stares at me like a little girl who has walked out onto a high-diving board and lost the nerve even to walk back to the ladder. As I watch, she seems to waver on her feet. Yet the moment I move toward her, she snaps erect and holds up a hand to stop me.

“I’ve thought a lot about your transplant work,” she says. “I’m the one who first figured out what you were doing. I never thought it was really possible, though.” She waits in vain for an answer. “It’s not possible, is it? That’s why you gave up?”

Silence. Then,“It’s not only possible, it’s simple. The problem is the illegality, the inconvenience of obtaining donors and recipients for testing.”

I nod encouragement to Drewe. She’s found the right button to push.

“You can really keep someone youthful past the normal aging curve?”

“Of course.”

“You could keep me young?”

“I’m going to, Drewe. When the women you went to school with are fighting menopause and osteoporosis, you’ll be skiing in Saint Moritz, making love as long and as often as a thirty-year- old.”

“But why me?”

“I’ve seen my mistake, Drewe. What’s the point of immortality without someone to share it with? The only real immortality is genetic anyway, at least for now. You shall bear my children. I could say I’ve chosen you, but this was all written long ago, by fate. When I realized how Harper had tricked me with Erin, and that you were the one I wanted, I thought of harvesting Erin’s pineal for you. There was a twenty percent chance that she would be a perfect tissue match, and at least it would have given her death some meaning. But I didn’t. I knew you probably hadn’t reached the stage where you could see the rightness of it.”

“You’re right. Thank you for not doing that.”

“There are always other sources. But first the children. Then more research. In forty years, who knows what might be possible? All that I have is yours, Drewe. My wealth and my talents.”Berkmann pauses briefly, but when he speaks again there is new urgency in his voice.“I want you to walk outside now, Drewe. Harper will not shoot. You must believe me.”

“I don’t know what he’ll do. He hates you for telling his secret. He said you wouldn’t light the gasoline, and he